Statuesque Images and Perfected Prints

As an art form, sculpture is generally viewed in 360?, and often is made of durable materials such as stone and bronze. This is indeed the case with sculptor Osprey Orielle Lake’s art. Her Cheemah Monument, for instance, is an 18-ft tall bronze statue in Oakland, CA, dedicated to "world unity, cultural diversity, and care for the Earth." The International Cheemah Monument Project (www.cheemahproject.org), which she founded, intends to place eight such monuments around the world (in addition to the Oakland monument, other monuments have already been installed in Spain and Germany).

But Lake also wanted to produce versions of her work that would allow for two-dimensional representation. The sheer size and weight of the sculptures often limit the ability to exhibit her art in many venues, not to mention that crating and shipping costs are prohibitive for all but the largest museums. Prints, of course, can travel more easily, and will make her work accessible to many.

All of these details became even more pertinent with her upcoming exhibit, "Images in Celebration of Life: A 20 Year Survey by Osprey Orielle Lake," at the Saginaw Art Museum in Michigan, which will open this spring. In preparation for the retrospective, Lake turned to Lenny Eiger, her friend and fellow artist, and owner of Petaluma, CA-based EigerPhoto. She asked him to produce the images of her sculptures that will premier at the exhibit.

Top-heavy prepImages of Lake’s sculptures were delivered to EigerPhoto as 4x5-in. and 6x7-cm transparencies, and then scanned in using the shop’s Aztek Premier scanner with Aztek Digital PhotoLab software. "We take extra care-and whatever time we need-in our capture step, because it’s always best to do it right the first time," says Eiger. "Since a drum scanner, unlike a flatbed scanner, reads one sample at a time, versus an entire row, it gets its dpi for every inch of the film. A 4x5 scanned at 4000 dpi yields 20,000 pxl." The Aztek Premier scans a 4x5 in about 20 minutes, and Eiger’s staff spends another 20 minutes prep time to mount the images on the drum and tune each one before the scan.